power rating?

[Steve]

Keep in mind that many power ratings are over inflated on the spec sheets. What you want to look for is power labeled as RMS (I don't know what it stands for) or continuous. Don't pay any attention to Peak ratings (you already know that). You basically want it to say something like this:

140W x 7 (20Hz - 20kHz, .09% THD @ 8 ohms, All Channels Driven)

This is from the Pioneer Elite SC-25 specs. You want it to give you all this information. You want it to give the power rating with all channels driven, the THD, the impedance of the speakers, and the frequency range. Some receivers will say something like this:

90 W + 90 W (8 ohms, 20 Hz–20 kHz 0.08%, 2 channels driven, FTC)

This is from the Onkyo TX-SR607 specs. Notice it only gives the power output with 2 channels driven. Onkyo doesn't publish the power output with all channels driven for this model (at least not to my knowledge), and I seriously doubt it gets 90 watts per channel with all channels driven.

Remember, though, that even with all the appropriate information given like in the first example, there's still no guarantee that particular receiver really pushes that much power. We know the Pioneers really do because they've been tested by third parties, but with other models we're not so lucky.